Vice Admiral Kenneth R. Wheeler, the 31st Chief
of Supply Corps passed away on 29 April, 2002, at the age of eighty-three.
Services will be held in Statesville, North Carolina, where he resided,
on 13 June. This will be followed by a full honors internment at Arlington
National Cemetery on 20 June 2002.

Vice Admiral Wheeler was born in Huntsville,
Arkansas, in 1918. A 1939 graduate of the University of California
at Berkeley, he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve through
the ROTC program.

Following service onboard USS HULL (DD-350)
and training at the Navy Finance and Supply Corps School, Philadelphia,
he reported for duty as Assistant Supply Officer, Naval Shipyard, Cavite,
Philippines, and was serving there at the time of its attack on 8 December
1941. Subsequently evacuated to Bataan, he served aboard USS CANOPUS (AS-9)
and as Supply Officer of the Provisional Naval Infantry Battalion, until
being ordered to Corregidor in April 1942. Present during the fall
of Corregidor, the young officer became a Prisoner of War for three
and a half years, bravely enduring and ultimately prevailing through unspeakable
hardships.

Following captivity in such locales as Corregidor,Cabanatuan,
and Davo, in December 1944, then Lieutenant (jg) Wheeler was among a group
of POWs headed for Japan aboard the transport ORYOKU MARU, when the ship
was torpedoed and abandoned. After assisting a seriously wounded Supply
Corps shipmate to the beach, he, amidst significant enemy gunfire, repeatedly
swam back to the ship to rescue others, an action which earned him the
Bronze Star Medal. He was awarded a second Bronze Star for equally
heroic and dedicated actions in January of 1945 in the wake of an attack
on another prisoner ship. This citation reads in part: "When the prisoner
group finally reached Fukuoka Prison Camp, he heroically endured below-freezing
temperatures in unheated prison barracks to care for the sick and wounded
and, as a result, contacted pneumonia, which almost resulted in his death.
By his outstanding fortitude, great personal valor and self-sacrificing
devotion. . .he contributed greatly to saving the lives of many of his
companions."

Following his liberation in 1945, Admiral Wheeler
went on to have a brilliant post-war career, performing superbly in key
assignments at the Aviation Supply Office and Naval Air Station, Jacksonville,
prior to serving, in 1960, as Director of Supply Corps Personnel, and,
three years later, as Commanding Officer, Naval Ordnance Supply Office,
Mechanicsburg.

Achieving Flag rank in June 1965, Rear Admiral
Wheeler served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics and Management on
the Staff of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, before assuming
command of Navy Accounting and Finance Center Washington. Rear Admiral
Wheeler was named Commander Naval Supply Systems Command and Chief of Supply
Corps in June 1970. His distinction in these critical roles earned him
a third star in January 1973, at which time he was designated Vice Chief
of Naval Material, becoming the principal advisor to the legendary Admiral
Isaac Kidd, Jr., and exercising authority over six deputy chiefs and six
Systems Commanders.

Vice Admiral Wheeler retired in September 1974,
after thirty-five years of service, but in the nearly three decades that
followed, he remained true to his Supply Corps and Navy roots. Along with
his beloved wife Marilyn, he was a fixture in the Supply Corps community
of Jacksonville, Florida, and, subsequently, a prominent, highly involved
civic leader in Statesville, North Carolina.

Admiral Wheeler will be remembered not only
for his unselfish and courageous service to our nation, but also as an
eloquent speaker whose account of his wartime experiences inspired generations
of young Americans, among them many students at the Navy Supply Corps School
in Athens. While he remains for all of us a cherished link to World War
II and, moreover, an exemplar of what Tom Brokaw has rightly called "America's
greatest generation," Vice Admiral Wheeler would not have wanted
us to dwell on the past, for he always maintained an abiding interest in
the future of our Corps and its people to the end of his days. His enthusiasm
and counsel and mentorship to junior and senior officers alike will be
sorely missed. While Ken Wheeler, the man, has left us, his example will
endure forever. Let us celebrate the memory of this patriot, extraordinary
leader, and devoted friend of our Corps with everlasting gratitude and
pride.J. D. MCCARTHYRear Admiral, SC, USN

The late VADM Kenneth Ray Wheeler, a truly
great legend of the United States Navy Supply Corps who died on April 29,
2002, was a World War II prisoner of war of the Japanese for more than
three years. He resumed his Navy career after his liberation in 1945 and
served with distinction until he retired in 1974.

Ken Wheeler was born at the small Arkansas
community of Huntsville in northwestern Arkansas on June 3, 1913, but at
an early age, his family moved to Fullerton, California He learned to swim
at the Fullerton YMCA and developed great skill at the sport. He
entered the University of California in 1935, joined the swimming team,
and accepted advice to enroll in one of Cal’s ROTC units. Young Wheeler,
who harbored a desire to “follow the sea,” opted for the Navy and its four-year
postgraduate commitment over the Army’s two-year requirement.

As graduation approached, Ken Wheeler had become
an Olympic-class swimmer and might well have been selected to represent
the United States had the planned 1940 Olympics not been canceled when
war swept across Europe. He was graduated in May 1939 and received a commission
as a Reserve Line ensign. Ken Wheeler had majored in commerce and always
wanted to be a Supply Corps officer, but he was ordered to active duty
and assigned immediately as assistant gunnery officer and navigator in
USS Hull (DD 350).

Ensign Wheeler only had to wait three months
to fulfill his desire to become a Supply Corps officer. He learned during
the summer that, as an NROTC graduate, he could transfer to the Supply
Corps and his application was approved in August 1940.

Wheeler was ordered that month to report to
the Navy Finance and Supply School (NF&SS) at the Philadelphia Navy
Yard. ENS Wheeler was impressed by a guest lecture of then LT James Boundy
(later a rear admiral and chief of the Corps), who extolled the virtues
of service in the Asia Squadron. The young paymaster was so interested
that he determined to seek duty in the Far East. Wheeler and most of his
classmates were assigned to the Pacific Fleet upon graduation in the spring
of 1941.

He sailed across the Pacific, along with five
fellow NF&SS graduates, aboard the SS President Adams to Manila, arriving
in July. The five other new young paymasters went to ships, but Wheeler’s
orders directed him to the Navy Yard at nearby Cavite, where he was assigned
as officer-in-charge of a branch purchasing office in Manila.

On December 7, 1941, (Dec. 6 in the United
States), ENS Wheeler went to a function at the Manila Army-Navy Club and
stayed overnight. He was awakened at about 3 a.m. and advised that Japanese
planes had conducted surprise air attacks on Hawaii, centered on Pearl
Harbor. All officers were immediately ordered to their respective ships
and stations.

As Wheeler recalled, “I reported to my duty
station at the cold storage depot. We were flooded with emergency communications
and orders from everybody in the harbor because they were all under orders
to get underway immediately.” The Japanese attacked the Philippines later
in the morning — within hours of the Hawaii raid.

The Cavite Shipyard Supply Department began
an immediate “all hands” emergency issue of supplies to American and Allied
ships and shore installations. The situation became more hopeless as air
attacks continued and Japanese troops came ever closer over the next 17
days. As the bombing was rapidly destroying the Philippine capital city,
Manila was declared an open city. Wheeler was ordered to ship the maximum
foodstuffs possible to the Bataan Peninsula then throw open the warehouses
to the Philippine civilian population and evacuate. ENS Wheeler carried
out his orders and departed Manila on Christmas Day on the last truck out. At Mariveles on Bataan,
he was first ordered to the disabled, but still afloat, USS Canopus (AS
9). Wheeler was subsequently assigned, along with other Navy personnel,
to the Provisional Naval Infantry Battalion, Bataan, given brief “training,”
and issued World War I vintage rifles. Wheeler remembered, “We had been
in place no more than a day or two when a landing was made directly in
our sector by about 600 Japanese marines in an attempt to cut the only
road that existed around the peninsula.”

Fighting as infantry, the naval unit held off
the aggressors and took heavy casualties but was relieved by a regular
U.S. Army unit six days later. By then, young Wheeler had been promoted
to lieutenant junior grade and was ordered in early April 1942 to Corregidor
Island, a heavily fortified bastion in Manila Bay. There, he relieved a
pair of senior Supply Corps officers who were evacuated to Australia. U.S.
military survivors, who had escaped from Bataan, huddled on Corregidor,
where they were unmercifully pounded by Japanese air and sea attacks. All
available defenders were massed on the east end of the island and fended
off five waves of attacks on the night of May 5 but were finally overwhelmed
on the sixth assault and forced to surrender. Wheeler recalls that it took
several days for the Japanese to confiscate all the valuables from their
American captives, who were forced to sit in the hot sun without food or
water.

After a month, their captors moved the defeated,
disheveled and demoralized Americans off Corregidor and to the island of
Luzon, where they were forced to march through Manila as extremely sympathetic
Filipino citizens watched in silence.

LTJG Wheeler has described the next three-and-a-quarter
years as the most difficult and trying time of his life, “In the final
analysis, however, it may have been the most important, positive experience
of my life as well. I was able to arrive at some firm decisions about the
philosophy I wanted to live by.” Future events would prove that he was
a man who lived by that philosophy over the next 60 years of his life.

Ken Wheeler was successively incarcerated for
about two years in two Luzon damp and dingy prisons and one year in a maximum-security
penal colony on Mindanao Island until early 1943. When American air attacks
put pressure on their captors, the Japanese responded by shipping their
prisoners back to Luzon. The Americans were subsequently loaded aboard
a filthy troop ship in December 1943 for transport to Japan, but the unmarked
vessel was torpedoed by an American plane and abandoned. As it was sinking,
LTJG Wheeler employed his swimming skills twice to rescue fellow comrades
despite machine gun fire that forced survivors to swim to the beach at
Olongapo on Subic Bay between narrow lanes. They were returned to prison
and forced labor in rice paddies.

A second attempt, on New Year’s Day 1945, to
move the prisoners to Japan also failed when their unmarked, foul-smelling
horse transport ship was sunk at Formosa by U.S. Navy aircraft while it
was tied up alongside an oiler. Again, LTJG Wheeler successfully swam ashore
two times with wounded Americans. He was later rewarded with two Bronze
Star medals in recognition of his heroic acts and the Purple Heart for
wounds he received.

The frustrated Japanese finally loaded 1,616
of the sick and wounded for transport to a camp at Fukuoka on Kyushu Island,
Japan. Wheeler was one of only about 120 to survive the travel ordeal.
They were kept only a few months in Japan as American B-29 raids on Japan
intensified. According to Wheeler, “They moved us to Korea to a port then
called Jinsen on the west coast. It’s now the port of Inchon. They put
us in a prison camp there and that was the camp from which I was to be
liberated in 1945. Great things happened then, just like bad things had
happened before. When the 7th Army landed at Inchon, tanks came through
the town, broke down the gates to the prison camp, and young GIs came in,
carried us all bodily out to the trucks and down to the beach. Landing
craft were there and took us out to a hospital ship.”

Ken Wheeler was transferred at the end of hostilities
first to Hawaii, where he called his mother at Fullerton, then was sent
home and was promptly promoted to lieutenant. He was hospitalized at the
Naval Hospital, Corona, California, where he read 45 back issues of Life
magazine to catch up on happenings in America during his absence, and returned
to active duty. During this time, he met a family friend, Marilyn Louise
Benningsdorf, on a Halloween 1945 date and they were married on December
30 at Fullerton. Chaplain Earle Brewster, who had been a fellow prisoner
or war, performed the ceremony. The young married couple settled in the
Washington, D.C., area in January 1946 for duty at the Bureau of Supplies
and Accounts. He rapidly rose to the rank of lieutenant commander and went
on to compile a record of distinguished service in the Supply Corps.

Retired RADM Frank Allston visited retired
VADM Kenneth Wheeler at the Wheeler home in Statesville, N.C., in August
of 1997. Kenneth Ray Wheeler’s experience during World War II demonstrates
his extreme courage in the face of unparalleled privation. The beliefs
that he developed during the early days of his imprisonment molded the
characteristics that were a hallmark of his Navy career and were undoubtedly
factors in his highly favorable relationships with superiors and subordinates
alike. Ken and Marilyn were an inseparable, loving couple for more than
55 years and reared two daughters, Sandy and Chris, and a son, Ray.

In April 1946, he was ordered as supply and
accounting officer, Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland. He returned
to BuSandA in July 1947 as detail officer in the Personnel Division. Promoted
to commander, he reported in July 1949 as supply officer of USS Boxer (CV
21), assigned to the 7th Fleet in the Far East.

CDR Wheeler next was supply and fiscal officer,
Naval Air Station Moffet Field, Calif., from 1950 to 1953, before reporting
to the Aviation Supply Office, Philadelphia, as provisioning coordinator
for about three years. In 1956, he attended the Naval War College at Newport,
R.I. He was promoted to captain in 1957 and reported as supply officer,
Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Fla.

I first met CAPT Wheeler in June 1959 when,
as a lieutenant in the Supply Corps Reserve, I served for two weeks of
active duty at NAS Jacksonville. At the end of my first week, I delivered
a completed special AOCP (Aircraft Out of Commission-Parts) report that
he had assigned me. CAPT Wheeler asked me if there were any supply operations
in which I had a specific interest. I told him that since I had no previous
experience in aviation supply, I’d be interested in exposure to as much
of his department as possible.

From among the available options that CAPT
Wheeler offered, I made the injudicious choice of selecting a hurricane-hunting
mission in a Lockheed WV-2. My wife, Barbara, and I, along with our 3-year-old
son, were staying at a motel outside the main gate. She was horrified at
my decision, but after I was issued flight gear and attended the briefing,
the mission was scrubbed. Months later, I reviewed my official jacket at
the Bureau of Naval Personnel. The fitness report on my NAS Jax duty read
in part, “LT Allston performed in an excellent manner and even volunteered
to go on a hurricane hunting mission.” CAPT Wheeler did not record that
the mission did not take place. I always credited him with responsibility
for my subsequent promotions. He and I frequently shared laughs in recalling
the events of 1959.

CAPT Wheeler was recalled to BuSandA in 1960
as director of Supply Corps personnel and served until 1963, when he was
ordered as commanding officer, Ordnance Supply Office, Mechanicsburg, Pa.
He next attended the 46th Advanced Management Program at the Graduate School
of Business Administration, Harvard University, from which he was graduated
in the spring of 1965.

Kenneth Ray Wheeler was promoted to flag rank
in June 1965 and assumed duty in July as force supply officer, Commander
Service Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, with additional duty as fleet supply
officer and assistant chief of staff for supply, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. RADM
Wheeler became fleet supply officer of the Atlantic Fleet in June 1967.
He returned to Washington one month later as director of financial services
in the Navy Office of the Comptroller. He became assistant comptroller
of financial management in May 1969 with additional duty as commander,
Navy Accounting and Finance Center Washington. RADM Wheeler was awarded
the Legion of Merit medals both for his Atlantic Fleet and comptroller
tours.

In July 1969, he reported as vice commander,
Naval Supply Systems Command. He relieved RADM Bernhard H. Bieri Jr., as
NAVSUP commander and 31st chief of Supply Corps in June 1970. As head of
Navy supply, RADM Wheeler was credited with devising and directing new
and better ways of doing business through advanced management techniques.
He was promoted to vice admiral and designated vice chief of naval material
in January 1972. As the senior supply officer on active duty and principal
adviser to ADM Isaac Kidd Jr., the chief of naval material, VADM Wheeler
directed the Navy’s acquisition and logistics programs in providing material
support to operating forces. The six system commanders reported to him.

VADM Wheeler retired from the Navy in September
1974. Among his military awards were the Distinguished Service Medal, three
Bronze Star medals, two Legion of Merit medals, the Purple Heart, and Distinguished
Unit Citations. In addition, he received the George Washington Medal from
the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.

He and his family first located in Jacksonville
but eventually settled in Statesville, a community of 18,000 in north central
North Carolina, where he became an executive in the furniture business.
He was deeply involved in community affairs, including leadership roles
in several significant Statesville organizations. He was named the 1988
Outstanding Citizen of Iredell County. He also continued his close association
with the Navy as an influential member of the boards of directors of both
the Navy Supply Corps Association and the Navy Supply Corps Foundation.

Ken Wheeler had a positive influence on his
Navy and civilian associates throughout his Navy career and in his post-Navy
activities. Several of those associates, including five Navy Supply Corps
flag officers, have eagerly provided reminiscences of their highly positive
experiences with him. Retired RADM Wallace (Wally) Dowd served both as
RADM Wheeler’s vice commander and his relief as the 32nd chief of Supply
Corps. He remembers, “Ken was not only a true professional but the kindest
and most compassionate man I ever met. I was his vice commander and under
orders to report as commanding officer of NSC Oakland, but Admiral Elmo
(Bud) Zumwalt decided he wanted me to come to Vietnam to take over as head
of U.S. Supply Corps operations and head of the Vietnamese Navy Supply
Corps. My wife, Polly, was in the hospital with a heart catheter but was
let out in order for us to drive from Washington to California. Marilyn
Wheeler and other Supply Corps ladies took charge of closing out our quarters
and arranging the shipment of our household goods West.” Dowd flew to Vietnam
and recalls enthusiastically that he had Wheeler’s complete support in
the war zone. “Whatever I needed in Southeast Asia, the Chief — Ken — made
sure that it was sent.”

When another Supply Corps flag officer, retired
RADM James E. (Jim) Miller was chosen as the 37th Chief of Supply Corps
in May 1991, he called VADM Wheeler, who gave him sage advice. In his eulogy
at a memorial service in Statesville on June 13, 2002, Miller recalled
that Ken Wheeler advised him, “There is one thing you should always keep
in mind. If you take care of the Corps, the Corps will take care of the
Navy.”

Yet another former chief of Corps — the 39th
— retired RADM Ralph (Mitch) Mitchell has a special fondness for VADM Wheeler.
“From the time I first met him as I was getting ready to transition to
the Supply Corps from the Line … to his visit to Wintergreen (Mitchell’s
home) after I retired … to his last note right after the 9/11 tragedy,
he’s been a special human being. He was always truly more interested in
your welfare than his own … with a sincerity and kindness that always made
you feel better every time you saw him. I feel blessed to have known him.”

A fellow North Carolinian, retired Supply Corps
RADM Peter (Pete) Bondi, reminisced about a speech that he heard VADM Wheeler
give during a conference at NSCS Athens around 1990. “Ken was the principal
speaker and delivered tremendous remarks. I was so impressed with his definition
of professional success. He said, ‘Perhaps the only real measure of success
as I now understand success will be the love, pride and spiritual development
of those I touch; in the extent of my genuine contribution to the progress
of the profession I follow; and in a meaningful contribution of the welfare
of the society to which I belong.’ I always felt this was a wonderful encapsulation
of how all of us should live and was especially descriptive of how Ken
did live.”

RADM Lee Landes, SC, USNR (Ret.), recalls two
instances of Ken Wheeler’s kindness to him. Landes, who played a leading
role in the formation of the first Junior NROTC unit at the high school
in Livonia, Mich., invited then RADM Wheeler to commission the unit. “Ken
agreed to come to Livonia, where I was living, to take a cadet review and
commission the unit. Having him here was very impressive and very helpful
to the Navy image in Michigan. I’ll never forget the time in 1983 when
I was in the hospital and had a telephone call from Ken, who was also in
the hospital. We had a nice long chat.”

Landes also recalls the time when he and the
late RADM Heinz Loeffler, SC, USNR, had dinner with the Wheeler family
and spent the night before Ken’s 1974 retirement as guests in his quarters
at the Washington Navy Yard. “It was a marvelous evening of good fellowship.”

Retired CDR Merlin (Mack) McCulloh, SC, USN,
served under then CAPT Wheeler, CO of the Ordnance Supply Office at Mechanicsburg.
When his tour was coming to an end in 1973, McCulloh faced assignment to
overseas duty. The 20-year Supply Corps veteran believed strongly that
such an assignment of living two years outside the United States would
be unbearable for his seriously ill wife and daughter, a rising high school
senior. CAPT Wheeler, an experienced former director of Supply Corps Personnel,
offered to arrange a special one-year unaccompanied tour, but McCulloh
opted for the alternative of retirement instead. He recalls an unexpected
offer. “Captain Wheeler told me, ‘My job is to help you retire.’
Later, as he and I were walking from his office to my retirement ceremony,
he said, ‘If you change your mind before the ceremony, I’ll tear up your
retirement papers.’ I noticed that he seemed downcast and I asked him if
anything was wrong. He said ‘Yes. I have confidential information and I
need to share it with someone. This afternoon, I must announce to our people
that OSO is being disestab-lished.’” Ken Wheeler’s concern for his subordinates
was a human touch that was greatly appreciated by all who served with him.

I had an opportunity to discuss VADM Wheeler
with his fellow Rotarians at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Statesville
two weeks after his death. Barbara, and I had planned a trip to North Carolina
in May. Ken and I agreed months before to attend a meeting of Statesville
Rotary together on May 14, 2002, and to go to dinner that evening with
our wives. After his death, Marilyn desired to continue with the dinner
plans and we had a delightful evening, reminiscing with this remarkable,
lovely lady. She also arranged for one of Ken’s fellow Rotarians to greet
me at the meeting site and to introduce me around.

My Rotary host that day was Andrew (Andy) Pendleton,
who served as an Army Air Corps staff sergeant in World War II and a retired
local architect. He sponsored Ken Wheeler into Statesville Rotary. Pendleton
was impressed with the fact that “Ken never made a distinction by rank
in States-ville. It didn’t matter whether you had been a private or a general,
he treated everybody the same. When I sponsored him into Rotary, I told
the club officers that, in deference to his rank, they should make him
sergeant-at-arms. They did, he accepted and he performed well.”

Another Statesville Rotarian, CAPT Barry Miller,
DC, USN (Ret.), recalls that RADM Robert H. (Bob) Spiro Jr., SC, USNR (Ret.),
then president of Jacksonville University, introduced him to CAPT Wheeler
when they were both on duty in the Jacksonville area. They met again in
Statesville years later and Miller recalls, “When Ken moved to Statesville
in the 1970s, the Navy had a bottom-of-the-pits reputation because a Navy
recruiter had been involved in several questionable activities that set
a bad example for the community. Ken got involved, the recruiter was reassigned,
and Ken turned everything around.”

Wheeler became president of the Statesville
Rotary Club for the 1987-1988 Rotary year. By coincidence, the day we agreed
upon for me to conduct a lengthy interview with Ken at his lovely Statesville
home in August 1987, was his second month as Rotary president. That interview
was the first of more than 150 that I conducted for “Ready for Sea, The
Bicentennial History of the U.S. Navy Supply Corps.” His warmth, generosity
and unlimited cooperation were reminiscent of our earlier meetings and
made it easy for my initial foray into interviewing the legends of the
Supply Corps.

Ken Wheeler made a strong impact upon the citizens
of Statesville and Iredell County virtually from the time he and Marilyn
arrived. He took leadership positions in several commercial and philanthropic
organizations at both the local and national levels. Serving as president
of the Rotary Club of Statesville and as chairman of the Greater Statesville
Chamber of Commerce are testimony to the esteem in which he was held.

The Statesville daily newspaper, Record &
Landmark, devoted a significant amount of space in tribute to this beloved
citizen in a May 1 editorial. The editor opined, “Kenneth R. Wheeler was
an America hero and one of the nicest and most professional men to ever
grace our town. … What made Mr. Wheeler different was his life experiences
and the philosophy toward life he developed during the war … America and
States-ville owe a deep debt of gratitude to Ken Wheeler. Those of us who
knew him will never forget him. His wife, Marilyn, is just as special.”

The Supply Corps is of a size with leaders
who encourage a spirit of family and the Wheelers epitomized that spirit.
Ken’s love and dedication to his country, the Navy, and the Supply Corps
was deep and lasting. In retirement, he continued to stay in touch with
Navy issues and leadership. He was greatly supportive and I can attest
personally to his interest and involvement. When I had the enormous task
of researching and writing “Ready for Sea,’ VADM Wheeler and the late RADM
Bernie Bieri invited Barbara and me to attend a reunion of the NF&SS
Class of 1939-1940 at Ashe-ville, N.C., in May 1993. Ken gently encouraged
his classmates to share with me their World War II experiences. Their previously
untold stories formed one of the most absorbing and fascinating parts of
the Corps’ history that was published in 1995.

The Wheelers were among hundreds of Navy, Reserve
and retired Supply Corps officers gathered at NSCS Athens in July 1995
to celebrate the bicentennial of the Corps’ founding. At an assembly of
Supply Corps flag officers on June 13, 1999, for a conference at the Defense
Supply Agency, Fort Belvoir, Va., we honored VADM Wheeler at a luncheon
with a special cake on his 80th birthday. Our wives joined us for the Washington
Area Supply Corps Association dinner cruise on the Potomac River that evening.
These gatherings are typical of many special occasions that Supply Corps
officers have enjoyed over the years. It was always a privilege to attend
such gatherings in the company of Ken and Marilyn. I consider Ken Wheeler
one of the finest Americans I have known — either in my military or civilian
career.

RADM Justin D. (Dan) McCarthy, NAVSUP Commander
and 42nd Chief of Supply Corps, provided a fitting capsule summary of this
hero’s life in a statement he issued upon VADM Kenneth Ray Wheeler’s death.
“Admiral Wheeler was a true patriot and dedicated Supply Corps leader whose
commitment and love for our Corps endured throughout his life. His unselfish
contributions to our Corps, our Navy, and our nation will survive the passing
of this exceptional American. I look forward to joining you in paying tribute
to the extraordinary member of our community.”

During his wartime internment, the young Wheeler
developed and clarified his life objectives and wrote a journal, “For My
Children,” a copy of which is now on file at the Navy Supply Corps Museum
in Athens. This journal, reads in part, “I resolved to put my wartime experience
aside where possible and to lose no time to self-pity, resentment, jealousy
or hate. Held too long or too deeply, these emotions must eventually consume
the one who surrenders to them. Every day left for me is truly a day of
grace, a day of love, a day of beauty and a day of happiness. I shall not
complain.” The foregoing words sum up the philosophy of a man who was not
only a great Navy leader but also a truly genuine human model and an outstanding
American.

An estimated 350 of VADM Wheeler’s close friends,
business associates, and family members filled Trinity Episcopal Church
in Statesville on June 13 for a memorial service. RADM Jim Miller gave
the eulogy. According to Wheeler’s fellow Rotarian, Andy Pendleton, “I
have heard many comments about the beauty of the service and its theme
of honoring Ken’s service to his country and the Statesville community,
his love of family, and his great sense of morality, honesty and faith.” RADM Bondi, who also attended the memorial
service observed, “I was impressed with the reverence in which Ken Wheeler
was held not because of his high Navy rank but because of his contributions
to his community and his fellow citizens.”

CAPT Dave Ruff, then Commanding Officer of
NSCS Athens, attended the memorial service, along with several other retired
senior Supply Corps officers.

Funeral services took place on June 20 in the
filled-to-capacity Fort Meyer Chapel at Arlington, Va. Burial with full
military honors followed in adjacent Arlington National Cemetery. Chief
of Supply Corps RADM Dan McCarthy provided the eulogy in which he bade
farewell to VADM Wheeler, a true American hero. “You have accomplished
everything you hoped for and then some. You have touched us all and because
of it, your legacy lives on in each of us. Fair winds and following seas,
shipmate.”

Contributions in memory of VADM Wheeler may
be made to the Navy Supply Corps Foundation, 1425 Prince Avenue, Athens,
GA 30606-2205.

RADM Frank Allston had 34 years of active and
Reserve duty when he retired in 1985. He was presented the Department of
the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award in 1998 for his 10-year effort
in researching and writing “Ready for Sea,” an extensive history of the
first 200 years of the U.S. Navy Supply Corps. He now serves on the Newsletter
Editorial Board.
Vice Admiral Kenneth R. Wheeler, SC, USN (Ret.), 83, passed
away on April 29, 2002, in Statesville, North Carolina.

United
States Navy Photo

A World War II veteran and the 31st Chief of
Supply Corps, he retired from the Navy in 1974 after 35 years of service.
His last assignment had been as Vice Chief of Naval Material.

He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Bennigsdorf
Wheeler, and daughters, Sandra Lee Hartman and Christine W. Will; a son,
Elliott Ray; and seven grandchildren. Services were held in Statesville,
North Carolina, on June 13 with full honors interment at Arlington National
Cemetery on June 20.

Donations may be made to the Navy Supply Corps
Foundation, 1425 Prince Avenue, Athens, GA 30606-2205.